When you Can't Create, Work 5.15.2025

    I had what I consider to be one of the best possible jobs my last year of high school and the summer after my freshman year of college. I worked for Lex Shuler & Company, Fencing and Landscaping. It was the perfect job for a High School student. By definition I could not work at night which meant that it did not detract from the high school experience. And there were perks. I was given the use of a company pick-up truck my Senior year. This arrangement was far better than him tracking me down every day after school. My boss and his wife were High-School youth group leaders at Church, so the use of the truck came with a clear mandate. I could drive to work, school, and church. I was given a Texaco credit card to keep the truck and my mowing equipment fueled up. On Sunday I got instructions for the first part of the week and on Wednesdays at Church I got instructions for Wednesday to Friday. 

    Beyond the perks, I learned what it meant to have a job. A “Real Job”.  Many of those lessons still resonate despite the intervening years and the difference between what I did then and what I do now. Many basic principles about how “do good work” continue to inform my thinking, along with other ideas accumulated over the various non-ministry jobs I’ve held since then. Each has helped to expand my thinking with additional corroborating information regarding how to work with attentive excellence.  This week I will explain how my work so many years ago informs a principle that is essential to remaining “sane” whilst doing knowledge work in general and ministry in particular. The principle I want to discuss is summarized by the phrase “When you can’t create, work.”

    Whatever the job there are days when your best laid plans are laid to waste early, frequently, and completely. You’ve had those days, and I have. For me today is one of those days. What do you do when it is not possible through interruption, low energy, or simple friction to do thought-intensive work? You work. You do tasks that don’t require much energy, which tolerate interruption, or which are brief enough to avoid friction or inertia. 

    In the late 1970’s when doing landscaping this kind of dilemma would occur early on rainy summer days. I’d arrive at the company warehouse and find the other members of the crew sitting there at the open garage door wondering how we were going to get 8 hours in when the first 4 promised rain. We couldn’t do the creative work of building a fence or beautifying a lawn, but we had tasks that needed to be accomplished, so that when the sky cleared or the day turned, we would be ready for action.

     In that instance we took care of our tools. Someone would change the oil in mowers, tillers, and other power equipment. After that someone (generally me) would hose off and clean decks on mowers and bodies on tractors. Weed eaters would be fully restrung. Every machine would be prepared for the next task. 

    At some point all the bladed tools would be laid out. We would knock dirt and other residue from shovels, spades, axes, shears, and trimmers. Then someone would use a file to put a fresh edge on each of them. Finally, the blades would be wiped clean with one rag and wiped down with an oily rage to protect the metal. If there had been infrequent rainy day breaks it might take all morning to get this work done. If we were fortunate, we could do the real work in the afternoon, knowing that our tools were in tip-top shape. If the rain persisted, we would only miss half of a day. 

    Every job, even preaching, occasionally requires this kind of work. Calling it “Make work” or “Work about work” doesn’t make it go away, it still needs to be done, and it even has a useful place. In our daily ministries we will have days that are like those rainy days of my youth. You can’t run and hide just because you are interrupted, but you do need to have a few things at hand that you can do. Tool maintenance is certainly better than zoning out and becoming frustrated. Let’s consider a couple of examples. 

Computer Hygiene

    Reviewing to-do lists and calendars. Removing unnecessary files, folders, documents, and applications from the desktop. Updating operating systems. Upgrading software tools. Making sure that devices are in sync when possible. This is not an exhaustive list. Point of fact; such lists can be endless. 

    When I am able to work my daily/weekly plan I allocate a brief amount of time to this kind of work, but the normal day to day work takes precedence and this piles up. It’s nice to know that amid constant interruptions and crises I can make little bits of progress on these items.  

Desk and work area

    Paperless? Hardly! It piles up when it is not properly filed. It needs to be accessible. Various documents need to be available to congregants who may need access to them. I keep a pocket notebook, a desktop notebook, and a paper daybook on my desk. I am beginning the onboarding for a staff member today which means printing copies of W-4 forms and other documents that I will use, and then labeling and preparing a file folder for a permanent analog record of the information. 

    Sometimes these documents pile up. The perfect day for getting a handle on things is one where other unforeseen interruption make reading, writing, and reasoning difficult. These tasks are perfect for the in-between times created by persistent interruption. 

Undirected necessary reading

    I have stacks of books to read which are not specifically tied to a given sermon series. I have notes and articles I clip and collect from the internet that are staged within in-boxes of various electronic and analog form. Nothing like 20 minutes between meetings or waiting on someone who is dropping by in a panic, to organize things in Evernote and even skim an article or two. I always have a book going that is infortainment and documents that will (hopefully) yield illustrative material. It’s hard to use a major calendar block of set-aside time for this kind of busy work, though doing the work will eventually pay dividends. 

    The requirements for this kind of reading are low energy and relatively time independent. And if you have been in the ministry for any time at you understand the value of snatching usable time whenever you can get it. 

Correspondence

    Twenty-five years ago, this would have been a bigger deal. With email, text-messaging, and video-chatting business communication moves more quickly—and haphazardly. Look at your email application. How many unread emails do you have? Do you use pinned emails as a To-do system? Do you file and organize important communications? Do you have messages of any kind that need returned? 

    Perhaps the 15 minutes you have this evening, that accrue to you because of an interruption earlier in the day is exactly the right time to archive messages and work on achieving “inbox-zero”. There is nothing better for your piece of mind than your To-do list at zero, your inboxes at zero, every message returned, every call completed—no loops unclosed. Sure, these tasks can all be scheduled and batched. My experience is that using well that time, which is otherwise lost, reduces the amount of time necessary for scheduling them.

Dig clean

    Finally, let me conclude by returning to my landscaping analogy. Back then, I did a lot of digging. One of the lessons I learned is that there is wasteful digging and efficient digging. The benchmark is how much “crumb” you leave in the hole when you use a spade to dig. In planting a shrub, I would begin a hole at the center. The quickest, most efficient, productive way to dig was to “dig clean”. Digging clean means that when you cut through the soil to the depth of the blade you remove the entire spade-full of dirt as one uniform piece. If you let dirt crumble into the hole, after several shovels full, you will have to stop to clean out the hole. If you move too quickly or do not pay enough attention you can easily find yourself doing twice as much work just to prepare a hole. If you have 12 arborvitaes to plant and you fail to dig clean you are making more work for yourself and slowing the whole project down. 

    Learning how our tools work and maintaining them in working order is a part of the commitment to digging clean. If you start a sermon project and don’t know where to accumulate Bibliography, or how/when/where you will take notes, or whether you need to refresh your language skills—you are not digging clean. You are wasting time by not allocating it properly. Your first task is to take care of these tool issues. Then, with your toolbox filled with sharp, usable, appropriate tools you will be able to dig clean. You will be able to dig into the text, plant the seeds of good ideas, and harvest an appropriate message for your congregation.